“‘Be nice, sweet maid, and let who will
be clever,’” declaimed the Bonnie Lassie,
who was feeling perverse that day. “You
want me to define his social status for you and tell
you whether you’d better invite him to dinner.
You’d better not. He might swallow his knife.”

“You know he wouldn’t!” denied the
girl in resentful tones. “I’ve never
known any one with more instinctive good manners.
He seems to go right naturally.”

“All due to my influence and training,”
bragged the Bonnie Lassie. “I helped bring
him up.”

“Then you must know something of his antecedents.”

“Ask the Dominie. He says that Julien crawled
out of a gutter with the manners of a preux chevalier.
Anyway, he never swallowed any of my knives.
Though he’s had plenty of opportunity.”

“It’s very puzzling,” lamented Bobbie.

“Why let it prey like a worm i’ the bud
of your mind? You’re not going to adopt
him, perhaps?”

For the moment Bobbie Holland’s eyes were dreamy
and her tongue unguarded. “I don’t
know what I’m going to do with him,” said
she with a gesture as of one who despairingly gives
over an insoluble problem.

“Umph!” said the Bonnie Lassie.

And continued sculpting.

III

As Julien had prophesied, it was only a question of
time when he would be surprised by his patroness in
his true garb and estate. The event occurred
as he was stepping from his touring-car to get his
golf-clubs from the hallway of his Gramercy Park apartment
at the very moment when Bobbie Holland emerged from
the house next door. Both her hands flew involuntarily
to her cheeks, as she took in and wholly misinterpreted
his costume, which is not to be wondered at when one
considers the similarity of a golfing outfit to a
chauffeur’s livery.

“Oh!” she cried out, as if something had
hurt her.

Julien, for once startled out of his accustomed poise,
uncovered and looked at her apprehensively.

Her voice quivered a little as she asked, very low,
“Do you have to do that?”

“Why—­er—­no,” began
the puzzled Julien, who failed for the moment to perceive
what of tragic portent inhered in a prospective afternoon
of golf. Her next words enlightened him.

“I should think you might have let me help before
taking a—­servant’s position.”

“It’s an honest occupation,” he
averred.

“Do you do this—­regularly?”
she pursued with an effort.

“Off and on. There’s good money in
it.”

“Oh!” she mourned again. Then:
“You’re doing this so that you can afford
to buy paints and canvas and—­and things
to paint me,” she accused. “It isn’t
fair!”